In conventional hydrometallurgical processes for the recovery of copper from sulfuric acid leach solutions copper is extracted utilizing solvent extraction with hydroxyoxime type reagents which extract the copper ion through a cation exchange reaction. The solvent extraction is followed by electrowinning of copper producing copper cathodes as the final product. However, in cases where the leach solution contains chlorides in addition to sulfates the chloride complexes are co-extracted when conventional method are used and thus cannot be easily removed from the resulting copper-containing solutions that should be subjected to copper electrowinning where the presence of chloride ions is not tolerated.